Why did the boring ape become an "ape universe scam"?

In the past year, Yuga Labs has brought many innovations to the NFT industry, expanding the influence of NFT in the mainstream world.

At the moment when the concept of Web3 is popular, there are rumors in the market that "produced by the ape factory, it must be a hit". The so-called "Ape Factory" refers to Yuga Labs, the publisher behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (Bored Ape Yacht Club). In just over a year since its establishment, it has turned Boring Ape into the hottest NFT IP nowadays, and has created its own "Ape Universe" step by step.

After the Apecoin (APE) token appeared on the market in March, Yuga Labs released the Otherside metaverse on May 1, and publicly sold the land contract NFT Otherdeeds. According to the introduction, Otherside supports people to use NFT to create characters for multiplayer online role-playing games in this virtual space.

With the endorsement of "Ape Factory", Otherdeeds, known as "Monkey Land", is highly anticipated. During the initial casting period, the Ethereum network was heavily loaded, and the network Gas fee once soared to 8000 Gwei. After this gas war, the floor price of Otherdeeds on OpenSea once soared to more than 8 ETH, but the rise failed to continue. The floor price of this series of NFTs quickly fell to around 3.5 ETH, a drop of more than 50% from the high point.

At the same time, the assets of the "Ape Factory" fell across the board. In just one week, APE fell by 54%. The floor price of BAYC fell by 38.3%.

Doubts about the "ape universe scam" followed. Some people think that Yuga Labs relies on the influence of BAYC to continuously release new projects in "matryoshka", but APE and Otherside lack practical application, and they are suspected of "painting cakes" to raise funds. In addition, because Yuga Labs favored NFT holders and teams in the initial allocation of assets such as APE and "Monkey Land", the chips were concentrated, and it was accused of not conforming to the spirit of Web3, which led to market crashes.

The law of explosive models of "Ape Factory" overturned the car on "Monkey Land", and the criticism of the market also reminded it: the layout of the metaverse must be based on practical applications, otherwise it will be difficult for the brightest signs to be recognized by the market .

"Monkey Land" was sold

Released Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) two major NFT series, completed the acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits series IP, Yuga Labs has become the most influential company in the NFT field, known as " Ape Factory”, and its pace of expansion has not stopped.

On March 17th, Apecoin (APE) tokens were issued in the name of the community. Less than two months later, on May 1st, "Ape Factory" and NFT game publisher Animoca Brands released the Otherside metaverse game world, which was released to the public Selling the metaverse plot, APE came in handy.

According to the official website, Otherside is a gamified, interoperable virtual world that is currently under development. This virtual world is a fusion of massively multiplayer online role-playing games and mechanics that support the Web3 space. People's NFTs can be turned into playable 3D characters, not just BAYC, MAYC, CryptoPunks and other Yuga Labs NFTs, other NFT holders can also create characters by importing the SDK.

Otherside has a total of 200,000 land plot contracts, half of which were minted on May 1, with an initial minting price of 305 APE each, which is about 2.2 ETH based on the current price. Unlike The Sandbox and other metaverse projects that sell "empty land", the plots sold by Otherside are different, and each plot has an initial scene, such as castles, jungles, etc. These plots have a certain degree of construction at the beginning of their opening, even if users do not have professional development knowledge, they can still enter, which makes Otherside's audience threshold lower than The Sandbox and other projects.

Otherside plot example

As the metaverse project officially released by "Ape Factory", Otherside has been highly anticipated by the market. Therefore, on the day of the initial casting on May 1, "scientists" who mastered the development technology, robots specially designed to grab funds, institutions in the circle, and large crypto investors gathered together to start a competition for the "monkey land" "The Great War.

This battle was brutal. During this period, the Ethereum network was seriously overloaded, and the network Gas fee once soared to 8000 Gwei, hundreds of times higher than usual, and the Etherscan block browser also completely collapsed. According to analytics firm Into The Block, the Otherside land sale resulted in more fees being processed on ethereum in three hours than in the previous two weeks. The frightening thing is that a large number of users are still unable to successfully mint land parcel contracts after paying expensive Gas fees, which has cost them a lot of money.

The battle for the "Monkey Land" finally came to an end amidst the crowds of spectators and the complaints of the participants. Subsequently, the winners listed these NFTs on OpenSea one after another. Under the FOMO sentiment, the price of Otherdeeds skyrocketed rapidly, and the floor price once rose above 8 ETH.

However, the price increase failed to sustain. As Otherdeeds "opened the map", the floor price of these land contract NFTs dropped rapidly. As of May 7, the floor price of the NFT series fell to 3.38 ETH, a drop of more than 57% from the high point. At this price, even the initial minters may not be able to make money, because in addition to paying about 2.2 ETH of minting fees, they also paid a high gas fee.

While Otherdeeds fell, the assets of Boring Ape's entire line also fell. In particular, APE tokens fell from a maximum of 27.6 US dollars to 12.7 US dollars due to the disappearance of market demand for casting land, a drop of 54%. In addition, the floor price of BAYC fell from a maximum of 167 ETH to 103 ETH, a drop of 38.3%. The floor price of MAYC fell from a maximum of 42 ETH to 21 ETH, which was cut in half.

As the trump card in the NFT industry, the collapse of the "Ape Factory" project caused a public opinion earthquake. People realized later that Boring Ape's "explosive style law" is not so reliable.

Infinite Matryoshka "Ape Factory" suddenly became "Ape Universe Scam"

This public sale of the "Ape Universe" plot has caused Yuga Labs to suffer a lot of criticism. Some people commented that Yuga Labs could have had a hundred ways to avoid this gas fee war, but they chose the worst one. There are also many participants who reported that they have paid the gas fee, but the transaction has been processing, but the initial minting has ended.

In the face of criticism from the outside world, Yuga Labs had no choice but to announce that it would refund the gas fees of users who failed to operate. On May 5th, the official statement again stated that the gas fee has been refunded to all those who failed to trade due to network congestion caused by the initial casting of Otherdeeds.

But the turmoil faced by "Ape Factory" did not end there. Because many users suffered heavy losses due to this land sale, many people on social media began to denounce the boring ape series as an "ape universe scam".

Twitter KOL @wdctll tweeted on May 3 that he was cut by "Monkey Land", and it took a day to recover. He revealed that before the NFT map of the plot was opened, the community was speculating on numbers, so he bought 3 "Monkey Lands" with an average price of 16 ETH, but he did not expect the price to plummet after the map was opened. Lost 35ETH overnight, "all the meat was cut."

Some people directly pointed the finger at Yuga Labs, saying that it used the influence of Boring Ape to continue to "matry dolls" to raise funds for projects, but it was not Web3 at all in terms of token and NFT distribution. "A lot of resources are tilted towards the team and big investors , and finally harvest ordinary investors." The user believes that the decline in the assets of Boring Ape is not only because the high hype sentiment is unsustainable, but also because the official team and BAYC holders and other big players can easily get a lot of chips , leading to crashing.

From the perspective of the development of "Ape Factory", since the launch of BAYC, the official team has been creating a club-style community around NFT holders, and almost all actions are to empower BAYC holders. This has always allowed BAYC holders to enjoy many "privileges".

For example, when MAYC is released, each holder of BAYC can get a "Mutated Boring Ape" NFT for free. When APE tokens are distributed in the name of the community, 62% are allocated to NFT holders and the DAO treasury. In addition, Yuga Labs received 150 million APE as an "initial contributor". Of course, these tokens have a 1-year lock-up period.

When selling "Monkey Land", "Ape Factory" did not follow the concept of decentralization advocated by Web3. Of the 100,000 land deed NFTs distributed on May 1, only 55,000 NFTs were for public sale, the remaining 30,000 were distributed to BAYC and MAYC holders for free, and 15,000 were distributed to contributors including Yuga Labs .

At the same time, the geographical distribution of these plots is also different. The land area owned by BAYC holders is in the center of Otherside, which is called Biogenic Swamp (organic swamp); the land area owned by MAYC holders is called Chemical Goo (chemical slime) on the periphery of Biogenic Swamp; contributors and The land area of the participants purchased with Ape Coin is located in Rainbow Atmos (rainbow atmosphere), Cosmic Dream (cosmic dream) and Infinite Expanse (infinite space), which are relatively peripheral.

"Monkey land" has a clear division of areas in the distribution

Skeptics believe that these insufficiently decentralized asset allocation methods have made the Boring Ape series of assets a tool for the team and the rich to harvest ordinary investors. In particular, Yuga Labs has issued BAYC, MAYC, APE, and Otherdeeds in just one year, and the latter two are still lacking in actual landing scenarios. "The continuous fundraising through storytelling has made Yuga Labs has gradually deviated from the original intention of building Web3.”

When APE was first launched, it aimed to expand the ecosystem to include a wider user base and promote community governance in the form of a DAO. After the introduction of the Otherside metaverse concept, Yuga Labs also announced that APE will become the hard currency of the Otherside economic system, but it is still unknown when Otherside will land. At present, the most practical application scenario of APE is to pay the subscription fee of "Time" magazine, and to purchase land in Otherside.

The Otherdeeds plot is still in the stage of separate sales. How to use it to start construction and play games still needs to wait for further official development.

At present, the actual demand of APE and Otherdeeds is lacking. The market pays more attention to it because of the endorsement of "Ape Factory" and the strong sentiment of "speculating expectations". Analysts in the industry believe that Yuga Labs continues to release new projects, but the lack of application implementation has gradually overdrawn the influence of BAYC. In the case of a sluggish market, new funds entering the market are difficult to sustain. APE and "Monkey Land" The decline is almost inevitable.

In the past year, Yuga Labs has brought many innovations to the NFT industry, expanding the influence of NFT in the mainstream world. However, the continuous release of Matryoshka doll projects has also caused it to fall into the controversy of "joining the rich to harvest the middle class, and then harvesting ordinary people". On the way to build "Ape Universe", "Ape Factory" still needs to come up with more landing applications to provide persuasiveness.

(Disclaimer: Readers are requested to strictly abide by local laws and regulations, this article does not represent any investment advice)